We have discussed what skills are required for the production of vegetables all the year round so it is now only fitting that we expand our conversation to consider the rest of the garden.
While the vegetable garden must still take precedence over all other aspects of the art there are roses and shrubs, flower and herbs, brambles and tree fruit that also require our attention. Beginning next week we will begin our progress, week by week, through all the seasons of the year as I intend for this to take the form of a Garden Calendar.
Garden works in the form of calendars were very popular in 18th-century England and North America. Nearly all the early American works on horticulture took this form, including Squibb’s “Gardener’s Calendar for South-Carolina,” Georgia and North Carolina (1787); Gardiner and Hepburn’s “The American Gardener” (1804); and McMahon’s “American Gardener’s Calendar”(1806).
It is my greatest hope that you, too, will share the experiences of your garden with us all for as that most eminent Williamsburg resident and ardent gardener John Custis was like to observe, we are all “Brothers of the Spade.”
I have included a crude plan of the garden so that you may picture in your mind’s eye where the work is accomplished and for those of you that have been so kind as to pay me a visit hopefully a pleasant remembrance.
Yr. most humble and obedient servant,
Sylvie Rowand says
Dear Mr Greene:
What a treat to see the garden plan. Of particular interest is the bed labelled “Strawberries & Pawpaws”. Which strawberries do you grow there? our native Virginia strawberries? the European musk strawberries? or the more recent introduction of the Garden strawberry? Pray tell, do you let them carpet the ground under the pawpaws or do you apply a more ruthless hand?
I have received your book a few weeks ago and have been enjoying it tremendously, finding lots of ideas and inspiration - especially when it comes to garden structures. I have harvested willow sticks for wattles. And will pollard a few young sycamore tree for sticks. But how do you prevent your sticks or poles from sprouting? Even willow cuttings put upside down in the ground will make roots! Do you burn the end? dip them in wax? or use other methods?
I gratefully and impatiently await your most learned answers.
Your sister in spade.
My Dear Ms. Rowand,
Willow boughs, often called osiers by the country people, are indeed amongst the finest sticks for the wattle. However, I would not, as you have discovered, use them as the stakes for they will certainly root. I have been told that this proclivity for procreation is so intense that a tea made from willow twigs, left to color in the sun, will act as a rooting stimulator for any species that is dipped in it. Sycamore twigs will often sprout leaves but will seldom root so are the better candidates for the stakes that you mean to strike into the ground.
The strawberries beneath the paw-paw are the European musk, often called the Hautboy. I find them to be the most robust of all the strawberry kinds and they have now formed a solid ground cover to the exclusion of most kinds of weeds. It was unfortunate, however, that the stolons I first received, from gardener a great distance from Williamsburg, were all of female plants so the planting, at present, is entirely barren. This error I did not discover until the plants were several years in the garden and I am only now raising a few males to compliment them and coax them into fruiting. As to more recent introductions of this seminal fruit I understand that the French have created a hybrid between the Virginia strawberry and the Chilean strawberry that has produced a remarkably large and luscious fruit known as the pineapple strawberry. Of this we have yet the pleasure of in Virginia but am sure it will be happily received upon its inevitable arrival.
Yrs. &c,
Wesley Greene
Sylvie Rowand says
My Dear Mr. Greene:
How vexing how your strawberry plantation! But I am amazed that the hautboy so flourishes for you as they do not always take kindly to the summer heat which oppresses our Virginia colony so persistently. Their situation under the pawpaw must please them exceedingly. The combination of those 2 plants is a terrific idea and I will implement it with Virginia strawberries, those wonton plants with dainty little jewel-like fruit: they are taking over the garden bed to which I attempted to confine them as well as the immediate surrounding. Only a most ruthless uprooting allows me some semblance of control. Much better I move them to the pawpaw banks.
I have indeed seen and tasted the Pine strawberry (sometimes called the Garden strawberry) when I was in France. It is indeed a most amazing berry of enormous size and wonderful taste and fragrance . You surely must have seen its description in Mr. Philip Miller’ last edition of “The Gardener’s Dictionary”. And while certainly not of the size of a pine, its taste and fragrance are remarkably like it. My dear sir, I do hope that you are able to obtain some plants very soon as you most definitively would enjoy them.
My experience with sycamore sticks have been that they often do sprout roots, albeit never as abundantly as willows. Perhaps you let your stick age before using them.
Many thanks again for your sage advice. I remain your most admiring sister-in-spade and await more installments of your garden calendar..